CrazySickBeautiful
by LuteLyre
Summary: 6th Better with three. The three times Kakashi's teammates see his face.


**READ:**

A/N: Ahhh it took forever, but here it is! The Kashi muse was definitely late. Possibly overly late, but he doesn't listen to me very often anyway does he?. :P

This is how I imagine them, and what they might be, if they'd been allowed by the canon plot to get just a little bit older. Beware of plot disregard and of a whole lot of wacky weirdness. I let it all come out with this one. There are some parts where I do not even see where my thought process was going. But it makes for a surreal, hopefully interesting and possibly engaging read. Especially if you're okay with bits of nonsense that may or may not pertain to the feelings of our fave masked ninja scattered throughout. :D

Warnings: Spoilers! Rated M for language and some mature themes. Also, be AWARE that I totally disregarded the whole Rin getting kidnapped thing and Obito going after her and the chaos that follows after. (Plot spoiler!) Or really, I didn't disregard it, I just pushed it back. In my story they are around 15/16 years old, and all three are chuunin. Please bear with me and rearrange your perspective. I would like the reader to think that a year after my story ends will be when Obito dies and the sharigan eye becomes Kashis.

Okay did that make sense? I hope so! Just remember: they are older and the Eye incident will take place a year after my story ends. Thanks!

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. Damn.

Threesome: Obito/Kakashi/Rin

The three times when Kakashis teammates see his face.

Crazy-Sick-Beautiful

_Don't let go,_

_I can't do better than this_

_I'll pay any cost,_

_Please save me from being confused._

_So show me what I'm looking for._

XX

The first time Kakashi's teammates see his face, it's an accident.

_(Shit happens.)_

They are gennin and practicing kunai throwing and it's a warm balmy summer day, with birds in trees and a hum of false peace lingering over the underlying war tension in the air as they lazily pass and throw and gripe at each other in their respective positions of Obito goofing off and Rin sighing exasperatedly and Kakashi making snide remarks while jeering half seriously, half amusedly at the clumsily goggled Uchiha.

Sensei abruptly departs in a puff of smoke after a vague comment about the Hokage-sama needing him and the three gennin nod and resume without much issue. They are used to Sensei needing to vanish often.

Obito misses a slashing kick through the air and Kakashi smirks underneath his cotton shield and calls him a loser. _(Not that he __**really**__ thinks that, right?)_

A usual thing.

Then Obito has jumped him with fists bent on revenge and eyes that flash red _again, _like the splash of blood that spray from the necks Kakashi has already begun to neatly split on some missions. Only Obitos eyes flash brighter somehow. _( Spark like a dead sunset)_

But Kakashi is to busy fending him off to bother thinking about similarities and disturbances.

It's always too easy, because Obito always fights with craziness that Kakashi doesn't understand and passion he can't replicate.

Kakashi fights cold, all accuracy and deadliness and quiet leaves that flutter in the wind as he passes but make no noise. Obito fights hot, all bold strikes and open defenses and easily maneuverable movements. It's odd and practically against his families signature style and _vulnerable._

Kakashi always pretends it doesn't unnerve him. It doesn't.

Only maybe it does, at least this time, because that must've been it that makes him just an inch too late to block the punch._ (Or maybe it was fate?)_

Either way, the alignment of his body goes off, the Uchiha's hit lands home and Obitos face is almost surprised as his fist punches Kakashis shoulder and sends him reeling.

He flies back half a step and at the last second realizes he is practically over Rin, who has bent to tuck a kunai back under her thigh. He jerks frantically so as not to hit her. To fall back and make contact would've been awkward and unnecessary and would almost constitute as touching, which is not something he allows.

He is jerking forward and Obito jerks back and then everything seems to move slow and liquid, as though Kakashi is watching from somewhere very far away. A clear gel over a mesh screen, he strains through all tingling strands quivering with gravities force. And he realizes something's happening.

Something nameless; so big and terrible that he isn't breathing, isn't daring to make any sound because this was something beyond him, above him and his puny understanding and sticky gel, scaring him shitless.

(_He is a child on the brink of starvation)_

He watches, melting-slow and molasses-stretched as Obito stumbles and pinwheels his arms so as not to fall backward. They are so close. The Uchiha's arms whirl and his hand lashes out and suddenly,

Oh so suddenly,

His hand is on Kakashis face, on his mask, and he can feel the imprint of the other boy's hand and fingers lining from the corner of his mouth to the line of his cheekbone and ridge of his ear. It may be odd, but it strikes him in the split second between shock and panic that Obitos hands have very long fingers.

Perhaps that second is his undoing.

Waterloo and Achilles heel, Heavens touch and kiss of life, his bane and cure in one tiny flash of an instant.

But it doesn't matter that much really, because the next second gravity has kicked in on the fumbling and grasping Obito and the boy follows its call dutifully and falls back on his rump to the ground. His fingers still dig in the mask.

Kakashi doesn't follow gravity's rule. He always hated rules.

Now he makes the decision not to simply follow Obito down subconsciously, unknowingly, (_Or he follows the rules anyway,) _

And he stands rooted and stock still as he feels the other boys' fingers tug, and then a ripping sound, and then—What? Wait!

The panic sets in, hard and cloying and metal-sweet as he realizes what's going to happen far too late to do anything but gasp, terror-struck, looking through his clear gel on the world suddenly altering, changing, morphing in front of him.

It tugs and cinches, ripples and twists, and he almost feels like his skin is being ripped from his bones as the cloth tears and shifts and then—_No!_

It's over. The sun is making Kakashi blink as it reflects off the hitat-tae of the boy on the ground in front of him up to his wide, wide-open eyes.

The wind blows hotly, the finches in the trees are gurgling like everything is just as mundane as it always has been.

There Kakashi stood, barely a scrap of mask material hanging on his neck and hardly covering his chin and Obito's on the ground with most of the gray-haired ninjas mask in his (_long_) fingers and Rin somewhere to his right. Looking. He can feel her presence like a shivery smoke hanging over a bonfire sky.

Bonfires always go out.

They are looking; they are staring shocked at him. At his, his _face_!

He is laid open as if to the bone, open and pale and vulnerable to the air of the summer and shivering as a breeze ran over his sweaty upper lip and the skin of his cheeks goosebump. They don't blink or move and there is _no reaction_. Just the air and the eyes on his face, his exposed skin and muscle and angles. They are looking. They are seeing it all.

Kakashi stood there, too muted and choked and rooted to shatter the liquid glass in front of him for 5 brief seconds. _(or maybe it was eternity)_

Then the glass broke with a crack and he squeezed his eyes shut against their gazes and his hands flew up to his face. _(stifling, covering, muffling) _His lashes felt wet and his breath rasped against the lines of his palms. This was too much. He crouched and his fingers scrunched and with a puff of smoke so noiseless and nothing on the blowing wind that he could've never been there, he utilized a transport jutsu and vanished away.

He wasn't ready. He wasn't ready!

Rins eyes had been so _big_. Obito had been so _stunned_. It was too much, too soon. He navigated himself to the topmost branch of the tallest tree of the forest by the clearing they'd been practicing in and perched on it, back digging into the bark and nails scraping in the wood and feeling the ants crawl over his shoes. His breath comes in sharp bursts, all quick quick quick.

He can see them just barely, leaning down and peering through the branches, gazing at his two statue-like teammates still standing frozen and unmoving. His breath shudders, watching.

Up here, in this tree up higher than high, where only birds and bugs could see and only wind caressed he could feel the light breeze on his lips and nostrils without dying. Up here he can draw in the wet breaths and wipe his nose. Up here he could be…safe? _( truthful?)_

For a little anyway.

It doesn't last long. When he finally feels some of the adrenaline fade back out of his blood Kakashi takes out the thick red scarf from his pouch and wraps it comfortably around his face and neck, his lashes drifting closed at the sweet detergent smell and silky fabric against his nose.

Better.

Now he can lean over to glimpse the other two unmoving figures below without feeling his chest burst. _(Shielded, cynical)_ He looks critically at his still two teammates. His fingers gripped so hard the knuckles turned white and the veins turned blue and stark.

They remain quiet. His stomach rolls like his guts been flipped inside out, blindsided.

He wanted to race down there like a white fanged flash, to appear in their slack faces and glare at Rin until she falters, to shove Obito down, down into the ground. Wanted to grab that slip of fabric from Obitos limp fingers and put it back where it belonged even if he had to tie it through his hair and grip it in his teeth.

He wanted…wanted to race down there and appear in their slack faces and rip the scarf off to mash into brown dirt, wanted Obito to punch him again, hard and fast and unwavering, on his face this time, his cheek, and feel his true skin crack and bruise under the impact and then he wanted to take Rins small brown hand in his own fingers and lay it over the cheek and feel her delicate pinky-white nails scrape over soft purple-blued skin….

_(No.)_

He watches, now holding his breath. Rin had finally raised her body from its stricken crouch. Her mouth opened. Any minute now Kakashi can go down there and throw them away, kick and scratch with his gray, perfect eyes until they don't see anything anymore, and remember nothing.

Her large brown eyes blink- delicate little lashes fluttering and delicate little mouth parting.

"O-Obito….His-"

"No."

Obito cuts her off. His fingers _(So long)_ are caressing the silky mask in his hands, the digits curled around the edges fervently. _(Reverently)_

Then he smiled at the watching Rin with dazzling teeth and flashed goggles, slowly placing the fabric in his pouch, his hand lingering over the button.

Kakashi's own fingers twitched.

Obito gestured to the medic kunoichi and then the two of them quietly left the clearing without another word spoken to the still balmy breeze and still-chattering birds.

Kakashi remained sitting in his tree; unbreathing, knuckles pale, face itching and limbs full of an energy to demolish them strangely inhibited and a bloom of bone shattering confusion in his chest. He stayed there for hours, (_or was it days)_ until the air was cold and his skin was colder, feeling like he'd been waiting for something obvious and perfect and rending, and had missed it.

XX

The second time Kakashi's teammates saw his face, it was an experiment.

_(Everything can be explained with a method)_

He had been fretting, troubled, on the edge and anxious for too long. He was going to go insane. They had said nothing! There had been no reaction from them at all in the days that had passed since the "incident", with absolutely nothing said or done. There were no odd comments, no side-long glances, nothing.

_(That was all there ever was- or more)_

There had been no crowing hoots of triumph from Obito, no liltingly suggestive comment from Rin on how she had been moved by it or some sick sappy shit like that. Nothing.

That was just…weird. And unlike them. And unexpected. And _weird_. Kakashi couldn't get over it. He was evasive and prickly, snappish and even more arrogant than usual. He was unfocussed, unbalanced, even off-kilter with Minato-sensei, who glanced at him strangely when the masked gennin missed a shurikan target twice in a row.

_(Not even a tease…)_

He was edgy. They would try to rip it off him, he knew it. They would corner him to 'talk' about it until they had cried and he had shown them again or until he had gutted their throats. Oh gods, they would try to make him take it off permanently! This was just bad on all accounts. He knew it would happen. He knew it.

But the weeks were passing and there had been nothing. Kakashi fretted and writhed and stuttered and was going to die if they didn't do something, if he couldn't kill something, if they… _(He doesn't know who he is anymore, lost in the wind like a child's cry on a magenta battlefield-wars were always lingering around them.) _

Finally he knew his sanity was gone, and he decided to test them. He would set it right, tear off bandages and lacerate the wound underneath until he broke tissue and it bled all over, grind in poison until it hurt again, until it felt the way it was supposed to. He would do it.

It was a chilly September day, one that made you stop and breath in the air just to breathe, just to feel yourself live and see your breath puff for a spilt-second joyride. But they were exhausted from a grueling training session and too starved to waste breath on wind. They were eating hot ramen and fish oringiri and Obito and Rin were squabbling in between shoving food down their throats and Sensei had had gone off doing Sensei duties. A man who was going to become Hokage had a lot of those, they were beginning to realize.

Kakashi sat on the end stool and fingered the cool wood of his chopsticks. He could do it now. He would do it. His fingers trembled and his breath lodged in his throat. He could feel it there curling around his voice box and sticking to his tonsils and the spongy cells of his trachea, fighting to get out and take a spin on the bright clear wind that ruffled his white hair and chilled his fingertips. He wouldn't let it. _(Or maybe he would. Let it all out and let it play)_

He brought his hand casually to his face. Could he? Dare he? Must he? His digits catch in the fabric that feels so safe, so soft, so stifling. He drags it all the way down, lets it pool around his collarbone, then sits there practically gasping, and shocked at his own actions. What the hell? The cool air shivered across his face and he blinks rapidly and licks his lips. _(Bare and still chapped)_ He can do this.

Any moment now it will be okay. Obito will drop his chopsticks with a clatter and stare again. Any moment now Rin will squeak and then start babbling at him. Any moment now everything will be okay again. Wait for it.

Wait…

They were looking now. He could feel their eyes and their pupil centering on his features. He picked up his chopsticks

Wait…

Any moment now one of them will say something and then he can beat it and think the worst of them again and go back to normal. _(Go back to hiding)_

But nothing happened. Once again, absolutely nothing happens and he is once again bewildered and imploded. They continued on eating, wolfing down the food with the urgency that spoke to the hours of training they'd done that morning. Kakashi was stunned. He sat, chopsticks half way to his exposed mouth, eyes blinking and lips quivering.

He felt… invisible. For the first time in his life. Not undercover, not hidden, but well and truly invisible without any action on his part. It was glorious. He reveled. His free hand came up to caress his cheekbones with ardent joy and a tiny tentative smile curled his mouth. He stares at them, dumbfounded and joy struck. _(Mask less and shield less and still alive) _

Then there was a spiraling downward thought drifting across his brain as he thinks of their reaction differently, the treacherous mind twisting his sparks with cold analysis as it always did, because Kakashi always analyzed first, felt second. It was the rule. 'Did they care at all?' His lips twist down painfully.

Kakashi hates analysis, and loves it, and craves it while shutting it off. He doesn't want it, yet can't live without it. But this is shinobi life. Without analysis they'd all be dead. Such was the way of the world. That was the fuck he'd set up for himself. He can't be bitter.

_(Bitterness tastes sweet)_

He shivers, wavering between despair and the pressing happy high of stonedness. The fingers that still hold his chopsticks above his noodles twitch and a bit of noodle falls, as slow as the drip from an icicle before it stabs, shiny sharp and prismed with a thousand rainbows.

It lands in his soup with a wet slapping plop and he flinches visibly as drops of broth flick lightly up from the ripples and one lands on the skin of his jaw bone. He gasped loud and eye-catching, overcome by the single drop of heat, only a few degrees from his temperature.

It was a flash of a knife, a cut that bit deep and laid open his skin, peeled it like the flesh from an orange and exposed the blind white bone, pulsing sheaths of muscle and blood that ran in rivulets and cells joining and separating and joining again. He reels. But how? It was only a drop of flavored water on slightly fuzzed skin truthfully, and the contrast is too confusing; he doesn't know what to do.

He is focused inward, unseeing and visibly panting, and this could be what makes him oblivious as a hand covered by a thick cloth napkin suddenly moves forward. _(Or it was fate, interlocking bands that make up his thread tightening ever tighter?)_

He doesn't see it as it advances, a looming snow sky, doesn't notice until it finally makes contact with his cheek. _(Didn't he have rules about this?) _ And then he is jolted into abrupt awareness and sits stock-still and rooted as Rin's napkin-covered hand briskly dabs twice at his wettened cheek and then moves away. He can see her eyes smiling behind the looming foreign pressure against his face.

Her eyes are glinting big and beautiful and the smile on her face and in her eyes is big, is glorious, is the morning sun on a war torn field, the burn of a remedy on a gaping wound, the smile of a hundred peaceful corpses being lowered into graves. Her eyes smile at him so perfectly he doesn't retaliate, doesn't do anything really, except stare.

"C'mon Kakashi, don't just stand there like an ass, your food will get cold."

He sees her and then beside her is Obito, and the Uchiha is grinning like a maniac, another morning sun, another hundred corpses, all so glorious Kakashi wonders if he's never seen a true smile before, and this is what they look like, because this is so gorgeous his own teeth ache.

Obito's chopsticks click as he leans over around Rin to poke at Kakashis food. "_I'll_ take it if you're gonna be all macho-man."

The voice, the jibe, it awakens that day-to-day Kakashi a little bit. He automatically blocks the other gennins utensils, automatically lifts his own and automatically shoves it all in, broth hitting his tongue and vegetables on his throat and lips slurping noodles. He swallows automatically. It feels good to be automatic for once.

He's eating with them watching, aware and unaware of it at once because when they're smiling and laughing like that how can he do anything but drink them in? _(Suck them up through the straw and down and keep them in, forever, because he doesn't know what it is they're doing but it's the most perfect thing he's ever seen and he wants/needs/must have it so bad.)_

He locked eyes with them. They were smiling like madmen, laughing now at his motions and Obito's teasing, laughing like crazy-people, and yet… He fingers his exposed cheek where Rin's napkin had touched. _(Phantom brushes all over, all the way down)_

They were so wrong, so stupid, so unlike anything else that he didn't know if he knew what they were. Why had he lowered his mask in the first place? He doesn't remember anything before those glowing smiles, those rending-mending eyes on his features. But it doesn't really seem to matter, and they don't seem to know what they are either.

They are laughing so crazy-sick-beautiful. Their eyes feel like shields, not spikes. So he shovels down his food and listens to their voices low and soft and doesn't lower his mask for the full 2 minutes and 52 seconds that tick by until Minato- Sensei reappears in a golden-green flash and Kakashi once again was covered up. _(His skin feels cold against the mask now-ice crusted) _

Later that night, after the rest of the day is a mere dream, that single moment stands in his mind crystalline and clear. Kakashi lies on the worn stained carpet of his worn stained floor, watching with glazed eyes the movement of his blood-rusted fan. He never bothered to get that splash wiped up, but maybe he doesn't want to and on some days, bad days, he looks up at it and mutters with sadistic humor about still not cleaning the family name, cleaning up his father. (_Break a little, bleed a little, Baby boy.)_

But today wasn't a bad day.

Maybe, he thought, testing the word across his mind like the feathers that float through the air when the messenger hawks take wing, Maybe they had managed to pass all the tests he couldn't remember the rules and answers to.

Maybe they were sick and beautiful and crazy and didn't need the answers.

It seemed that way.

Maybe, the next thought coming in the deep black night that drapes the whole room until nothing had shape or color anymore, not him or the fan, when he was so tired the worn carpet felt like the cocoon of Rins arms when she wraps bandages on him before he can move away, when Kakashi remembers their faces and remembers to breathe, to let it out and play; Maybe sometimes he didn't need the answers either.

XX

The third time Kakashi's teammates saw his face, they lowered the mask themselves.

_(Break me back together)_

It had been a month. Only a month? It seemed like an age had passed. A world unknown to the world before, a season and then some. As though the spinning of the worlds axis had tilted the opposite direction with some cosmic dictation and then galloped on its wheel like a caught ferret, a thousand revolutions a second, before suddenly slipping back into the normal rhythm it had rambled at before, and the fucked-up beings on earth had blinked and stuttered and found that in the years of their lives where they had grown up and grown old and grown dead, only a mere slip of a grimy month had occurred.

It was a cruel trick.

But when was war not cruel? Kakashi knew war was cruel. He knew it like he knew the inexorable truths of life; He was a shinobi of Leaf, his Father committed seppuku, war was cruel, and his village was falling into tatters.

War could make that happen too.

Leaf fought every day with grim faces and grim hopes and grim fears.

Kakashi killed every day. _(Slash of blood and scream of birds and vomit on black snow afterward.)_

Obito died a little every day. _(Tight looks and shimmering eyes that water salt)_

Rin shrunk a little every day. _(Wrap bandages tighter, thicker, so that no more blood spills, ever.)_

They were becoming the fabric of war, the mask that suffocates and leeches blood and sweat and tears from the skin, sprinkles it on an enemy's blade, a poisoned senbon. Kakashi would have thought it was ironic if he had thoughts like that anymore.

War made things run faster, leap higher, makes the lungs burn even when you sleep and brings the adrenaline pump up to soak your brain until the roar in your ears drowns all other noise out forever.

Kakashi looks back on the last month and thinks of it as a blur of red and silver swirls on an ink-black sky and a shock-bright moon like that fan that ridged Obito's clothes and the glint from his father's old sword. _(Moonless nights he goes and lets his eyes stare at the sky until the whites show all around and he can't see stars either.)_

But between all of that is the Uchihas grin, Rin's laughter. When the Silver-haired ninja thinks long and deep and penetrating to the quiet sliver of brain that doesn't beat to a war drum he can almost see their faces from when he lowered his mask, all demented and glorious and diseased like the insanity that ate at them all. Only a month ago. Only a lifetime ago.

But now it's been a month of kill and die and fight, and a lifetime of bleed and choke and strangle, and he's been suddenly jolted from that spinning whirlpool of frontlines and vomit splattered snow and black underneath his fingernails, of don'tthinkaboutitevernever. Jerked out of an endless cycle of blank faces and blank motions and blank thoughts. Woken abruptly as if doused with ice water and shaken from his robotic reality in to a sudden lightning-bolt of far higher awareness, something sharper and tangier, a stinging bite of an already bloodied blade.

_(Shake off the dreams that meld with conscious, the conscious that blends with dreams; lift the slow pressing fog of the knife on your neck.)_

It is a reality of far more pressing, urgent needs and tantalizingly slow drips of time. He is standing in the woods of some little battle ripped and murdered corner of Iwa, damn them. There is snow on the ground that's been trampled to mush and bushy undergrowth dripping with half-formed icicles. His breath puffs to form clouds on shivery air even through his bloodstained mask. The scrap of fabric is literally soaked in enemy blood and clings wetly to his lips; when he breathes in he inhales as much blood-fume as he does oxygen.

He stands there, shocked awake from war-drone and killing machine, because Obito is lying there in front of him with red pooling around him like halo and not breathing. Not. Breathing.

_(Oh shit hell and damn and motherfucking bastard, oh fuck, oh fuck, he needs more words but can't find them and he can't make his mind work to grasp at them now.)_

He stares blankly at the absent rise and fall of the Uchihas chest, the blood on the eyes and mouth and he had only gone down a second ago, just a second! Kakashi feels his awareness split into another being again, and observes the situation not stock-still through a heady slow liquid screen, but pounding in rage and cacophony and fear against a foot thick glass wall that separates himself from himself from Obito.

Obito on the ground, Obito bleeding like a baby, Obito not breathing.

He punches at the glass and watches himself drop heavily to his knees beside the Uchiha _(drops flick up like ruby jewels-pretty, darling) _and feels himself call hoarsely to Rin with lungs that inhale blood. She would come, and fix him, and it couldn't be anything worse than a concussion, than stress from too many hours/days/wounds, couldn't be dying.

Rin's all pale and small and her hands glow neon like glow sticks in the dark. Kakashi watches her make everything spark up and turn it beautiful, all picture snow and green light and serious pointed little face with bit lips and long eyelashes and white edges.

Kakashi doesn't understand the moment. He doesn't understand a lot right now, he's feeling like he's got nothing in his stomach and everything in his throat and eyes that don't have lids anymore because he's too busy staring at his team to blink out snow and grit and other unmentionable things.

He doesn't understand whey his hands are shaking so badly, doesn't understand why his teeth are chattering through his mask. He doesn't understand why he's feeling the urge to slick down the fabric and jolt forward to mimic what Rin was trying to do now; press red lips to red lips and blow, push life into soul, murmur orders against teeth like breath into mouths when people kiss, like movement into lungs, like beats into a heart.

Kakashi wanted to press his lips on the Uchihas and feel him press back.

Rin is so pale, so perfectly pale. Kakashi doesn't understand why he wanted to lift and take her trembling face in his hands; feel the shudder of her cheeks under the pads of his thumbs. He doesn't understand why he wanted to press his skin against hers where it was white and gaunt and make it all soft sun-brown shine like usual. (_Make things hot enough to burn, make the cold ache vanish)_

And most of all he doesn't understand why he was stock still with heart rate thundering at lightning speed in his ears, cutting through the storm with high pressure clarity, feeling like his world has strangled itself and remembering them; Obito's goggles flashing and the feel of Rin's hair under his fingers, his eyes, her winks, his smile, their laughter, all dementia soaked and shining lovely.

(_Things are gonna hurt so bad, little man, things are gonna break and burst, and it will be all your fault, fault, fault.)_

He was going to die. The glass would close in until he couldn't breathe, until he stopped inhaling like Obito and went white like Rin because if they died, then he was gone and dead and nothing too. He was going to die.

He realizes it like he realizes when a knife cuts his flesh, slick of pain and hiss of steel and tunnel vision all at once as it's there, and then that's when Rin looks up suddenly her whole body shaking, and there's a whole giant fucking sunrise in her eyes as Obito's chest shudders and gulps like a fish and _rises._

Kakashi's glass shatters into a thousand pieces.

He slumps forward onto to the Uchihas shoulder, feeling the rise and fall of the ribcage under his cheek, and its like his whole body just untied itself from the strings and floated out to sea and he starts to laugh, because he cant hold anything together anymore, all low and choking and so fucking _relieved. _He was going to melt into Obitos lungs and stay there forever.

_(Wobbling and wibbling and laughing a little like crying, living a little like dying, and gods on high, he was lost a long time ago wasn't he.)_

Obito gives a weak grin that stretches his face, and his fingers flutter like little birds towards Kakashi, and Rin starts to laugh too, with her giggle pealing out and hitting the air and cracking the dream reality for all of them.

Then they are all laughing like they will never stop, and their fingers reach and clutch for one another, knuckles sweat-slick and nails broken and grasping, locking. (_forever, it feels like)_ he looks in their eyes and feels like they three are the only three in the world, the only ones who matter, in this new reality that was biting and cutting and hurting so good.

He drags a rattling, blood-soaked breath in between hacking laughs, and watches as suddenly Obitos fingers disengage from Rin's hand and laboriously crawl up the squished space between the three of them to alight on his mask, hooking two fingers delicately, lovingly into fabric on the bridge of his nose.

They still, all bright and gasping, feeling like they are still laughing behind the solemnity of the moment as Kakashi remains unmoving.

He teeters on the edge of something big and perfect and rending, some test he doesn't have answers to, and all he wants to do is fly off the edge, hurtle over the precipice, fall into their arms.

_(In the dark cold forest under a bloody moon they are all being new again, squalling infants out of the womb)_

Obito hovers and waits, because Obito was young and foolish and he fought with fire and loved with fire and needed with fire. But he hurt like fire too. So Rins eyes catch on the other ninja's fingers and then she gives her little half smile that shoots birds down from the sky.

"You'll choke under that thing now."

She murmurs low and grating, but smooth as butter and cream. Her fingers join Obitos at the mask, _(long fingers and tiny fingers that flutter all the way down and he'd been choking for his whole life,) _and together they drag the mask down, down, down.

He breathes in the cold bitter air free of blood fumes and his eyes blur and unfocus as he feels their hands caress over his nose, across his lips, drag along his cheeks and over his chin. It doesn't matter that they are in the open that anyone could see, because it is only Rin and Obito and himself in the world, only them, and they...they are just extensions of him anyway. It feels so fucking good Kakashi can't breathe.

He feels their fingers playing over his skin, and suddenly there is a hand locked behind his head and it is pulling him back down and crushing his chest against the Uchihas and Rins slim tiny fingers are in his hair as he's suddenly mimicking what Rin had done earlier, with his red lips on Obitos red lips, only it seemed that Obito was forcing life into _him_ and not the other way around because he was just so full.

Obito presses on his lips with his own bloodied ones, and Kakashi's so full he doesn't remember emptiness so he presses back.

Then Rin was cupping her hands on his pale cheeks _(so soft, so warm) _and forcing life into him too-kissing him-and it was more beautiful and terrible than anything in his whole damn life.

Then it was Rin and Obito kissing, and Obito and him kissing, and Rin and him kissing, and they are tumbling and huddling together as fingers flew and Kakashi let himself dissolve into their skin and their lips and their mouths.

He was fragmenting out into a hundred new pieces, each one as newly forged as the new world he'd slipped into with just them as the occupants. Just them with the axis tilted, spinning fast and shattering bright. Just the three of them moving over one another and touching and pressing and finding all these ways to just meld to each other, frantic and grasping, and its so good it hurts and makes him moan and jerk and clutch.

They're all kissing and kissing and kissing, and forcing and forcing and forcing, and maybe its going to last forever and ever and ever.

Kakashi gasps, and he's crying, Obito's bleeding, and Rin's writhing but it doesn't really matter, nothing matters except this and here and now where he is as free like he'd never been before, freer than a puff of air on an icy wind, freer than the last breath out of lungs before death, freer than a thousand sunlit meadows.

(_Oh Baby Boy, you're dead and flying away to the stars aren't you. Watch them glitter sweetheart, watch them shine.)_

When the lips kiss even more, and the hands touch even more, Kakashi can't help but start laughing again—hacking and choking and moaning and whimpering. So fucking perfect.

Laughing at this new crazy world and at the snowflakes on his upper lip _(strange and cold and glorious)_ and the Uchihas clumsy rough fingers and at Rins blushing lips and cheeks and neck.

And they laughed at it all too.

So the three of them head down the giant black well and into the cloaked doom of night, and they tread the hazed crumbling terror-struck road together. They are breaking rules and passing tests without answers. Slicing, biting, lunatic, all red eyes and wheezing breaths and maniacal glints and twisted hearts and pale kissed lips; all laughing crazy-sick-beautiful.

XX

And later, much later, after the eyes cut and the hearts broken and there's too much blue and pink and orange around to think straight, Kakashi will remember that he never found the blood-stained flung-aside mask from that snowy night with two teenagers who bared his soul and learned with him what it was like to shatter into one.

_(Show me what I'm looking for. Third times the charm.)_

_Fin_

A/N: Oh my god-goodness. That was something. It even weirded me out. But oh I really loved it. It was worth all the effort. :D *Sniff*

I love Rin and Obito, and they paired with Kakashi. (Go read Chevira Lowe on FFN, she has some really good ones.) The idea of what they meant to him, what they mean to him now, and what they could have been just bring me Goosebumps. Poor Kashi had a rough ride with this one didn't he? Its okay baby boy, ill write you as the sexy copy-nin you are soon enough. :P

In short, Kakashi/Rin/Obito or a mix of those three just makes me swoon. Poor Kashi's been through so much shit. But that's why we love him.

I hope you enjoyed it and it was marginally understandable! I should probably go organize my mind into regular talking patterns now…XD

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Thankyou!


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